Non-volatile memory (NVM) is increasingly found in applications, such as solid-state hard drives, removable digital picture cards, and so on. Flash memory is the predominant NVM technology in use today. However, flash memory and other NVM memories have limitations, such as a relatively slow write operation speed. In addition, NVM devices that use bus protocols, such as the serial peripheral interface (SPI) may not be able to perform read operations while the above mentioned slow write operations are in progress. This can severely limit the usage of such NVM devices in systems that execute instructions directly out of the NVM device.